Boeing's Charleston workers get bonuses for better 787 production

Workers at Boeing’s South Carolina plant will receive bonuses over the next month since they got fuselage deliveries back on track after production was snarled late last year by the addition of longer 787-9 sections.

Employees were notified Monday that they had made the needed improvements. The company saw a more than 72 percent reduction in “jobs behind schedule” for 10 days.

This means that the North Charleston plant is getting closer to the production levels sustained in Everett, Wash. North Charleston supplies aft and mid-fuselage sections for 787 jetliners that go to final assembly in Everett and in North Charleston.

“They’ve significantly reduced jobs behind schedule,” said Candy Elsinger, a North Charleston Boeing Co. (NYSE: BA) spokeswoman. “Our ultimate goal would be to eliminate any and all traveled work to final assembly. We’re not quite there yet.”

"Traveled work" refers to work that must be moved in order to be completed in another location.

Puget Sound area Boeing workers have for years said that North Charleston work didn't meet the standards maintained at Puget Sound plants.

This was one reason for the initial three years of delays with the 787-8s: Sections were arriving in Everett with large amounts of work remaining to be finished.

Eslinger said the efforts have “significantly increased” the quality of work in the mid-sections sent to final assembly.

“Over this time period from January to now, the aft and mid-body team has been consistently delivering airplanes to Everett and South Carolina final assembly, with the lowest traveled work and the highest condition of final assembly, than we’ve ever seen,” she said.

The bonuses were 8 percent of base pay for the previous 12 months for people working on the assembly line, and $2,500 for office workers, according to a story in the Charleston Post and Courier.

Eslinger declined to confirm those numbers, but she did say they did not apply to contractors.

Boeing employs 7,000 at the North Charleston site, which includes contractors. Eslinger wouldn’t say what percentage are contractors, but press reports earlier said the slowdowns were partly due to reductions in the contractors’ ranks.